The Fixer

62

He staggered to his car, panting heavily. His throat was sore from the smoke and his eyes were stinging.

He had to leave before the fire trucks arrived.

The fire seemed to be localized on the third floor, but it was a wood-frame house and would go up quickly and easily. He heard sirens, which meant they’d be arriving momentarily. Maybe they could save the house.

He wondered if they could. He hoped so.

Andrea was in the hotel suite when he returned. “I think I’ve got it, the-” She saw him, took it in. “Shit, Rick, what happened to you? Are you okay?”

His face and hair were covered with black soot. He looked like a chimney sweep. He’d attracted double takes in the hotel lobby. “I need some new clothes.”

“Where were you?”

“Never mind that. Tell me what you found.”

“I need to show you. But where’ve you been?”

He told her some, then went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and let it run. He came back out and began stripping off his smoke-saturated clothes. He did it without modesty; they had seen each other naked before. She didn’t look away.

“You reek of smoke.”

“Take me through what you’ve got.”

She talked to him while he showered. “The key piece was B &H Packing, that meat-packing plant. Apparently, Sculley’s Bay Group has a dozen subsidiaries and two of them have as their principal ownership a nonprofit entity called the Donegall Charitable Trust. Including a meat-packing plant in South Boston. So the paper trail points directly to Thomas Sculley.”

“All right. That’s great. That’s great.”

When he finished showering, he toweled off and he still smelled of smoke.

“Can you pull up the Cambridge Fire Department’s Twitter feed?” he said.

By the time he was dressed, she called him over to her laptop.

CAMBRIDGE FIRE DEPT. @CAMBRIDGEMAFIRE

BREAKING: fire sweeps through west Cambridge house. Firefighters respond to 284 Clayton Street for a 2 alarm fire.

“Sweeps through means the fire wasn’t contained, I assume,” she said.

“I don’t know. What about a body?”

As if the Cambridge Fire Department’s Twitter feed could hear him, another tweet rolled down the page.

CAMBRIDGE FIRE DEPT. @CAMBRIDGEMAFIRE

2 alarm fire 284 Clayton Street sadly claims 1 life.

“He’s dead.”

“Who?”

“My old fr-neighbor. Jeff. He died in the fire.”

“Oh my God.”

“Wait. They’re going to assume it’s me who died in the fire. Until Jeff’s body is identified.”

“So that buys you time, doesn’t it? How long could that take?”

He shrugged. “Maybe a day. Maybe less. I don’t know.”

She noticed his eyes were wet. “He tried to kill you. If you hadn’t stopped him, that would have been your body in the house.”

“Still. I killed a man.”

“He torched your house and tried to kill you because they offered him a better deal than splitting the proceeds from the sale of your house.”

“I need to get over to the FBI,” he said.